It is known practice for aircraft to have electronic equipment incorporating at least one electronic board. The equipment, which generally comprises units, is collectively housed in systems referred to as bays or racks. These bays or racks may be positioned close together: thus, for example, all of the avionics bays are grouped together in a region located at the front of the hold.
The present invention is not restricted to the aeronautical domain and therefore relates to any environment using electronic equipment fitted with electronic boards that require cooling. Thus, the invention also finds applications in numerous domains such as the automotive, space, maritime, industries.
The electronic boards bear electronic components that dissipate heat. Now, a unit for a piece of equipment groups together a multitude of electronic boards and a bay or rack groups together a multitude of units. It therefore follows that there is a significant localized production of heat that needs to be minimized.
The applicant company filed a Patent Application FR2964005 on Aug. 19, 2010. The application relates to electronic equipment containing at least one electronic board. The electronic board is equipped with at least one plate through which fluid circulation channels pass which channels can be connected to connectors on the equipment provided for that purpose so as to place the channels in communication with a cooling fluid inlet circuit. The plate is mounted firmly on the printed circuit board of the electronic board so as to be in contact with the electronic components that dissipate the most heat.
Document US20070297137 discloses a cooling module for an electronic equipment comprising a bladder having a chamber, fluid being disposed in the chamber wherein the bladder in its inflated state impresses the cooling module against an adjacent electronic circuit card. The cooling module is forcibly pressed against adjacent electronic circuit module providing increased physical stability to the electronic circuit card. The cooling module is in physical contact with the electronic equipment which raises issues of sealing, modulation of the force applied to the electronic circuit by the bladder in order to avoid any failure, the extraction of the cooling module which obliges to deflate the bladder and renders the system complex.
Document U.S. Pat. No. 4,931,904 discloses a cooling device in an unused circuit card mounting location and comprising cooling fans. The application provides as many cooling fans as locations to cool on the card; the fan has to be located in front of the region to cool. Cooling requires air stirring and power supply which renders the system complex.
Thus, each of the electronic boards of the equipment is provided with a cooling plate: the cooling device of a complete equipment item is therefore relatively complex in its manufacture, its use and sometimes even its maintenance because there are as many cooling plates as there are electronic boards to which these plates have to be fixed.